


To Rinse The Brush and Go Again

by peachesanddenim



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Dean Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Sam Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, The Empty (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:28:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28133184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachesanddenim/pseuds/peachesanddenim
Summary: “It’s the best thing that could’ve happened to me, considering.” Cas admits, pursing his lips. He closes his eyes and takes a big breath that racks his shoulders. “Dean, I believe we need to talk.”Dean gulps and he feels sweat bead out on his forehead. He walks away from the counter, ponders leaving the room entirely, but ultimately he falls into one of the chairs at the table.“Alright, let’s talk.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 252





	To Rinse The Brush and Go Again

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, listen: I have been in the spn fandom for too goddamn long. I think about ten years? I started when I was in seventh grade and I’m twenty two. I have exhausted too much time in this hell. However, for the past three years, I’d moved on. Grown up. Let the hope for destiel that buoyed my participation die. It held a place in my soul, of course. Halo by Beyoncé would play and I’d hyperventilate. I have “Too Much Heart” tattooed PERMANENTLY FOREVER on the rib beneath my heart. But I digress, I even I had moved on. I felt bereft of the show. It wasn’t the same. 
> 
> Then 15x18 happened, and my brain filled so quickly with hot, confounded air that it blew the fuck up. 
> 
> The subsequent shattering of my heart that is the dead husk of a finale is something I refuse to talk about. 
> 
> This is my fix-it! 
> 
> Enjoy! 
> 
> (Btw, the title is from Cold Moon by The Zolas, highly recommend)
> 
> -Richie

“Dean, I’m not coming back home.” 

Dean is so fucking tired. He has never felt more ancient than he does right now, and fuck- how old is he these days, anyway? Forty-one? Bodily, maybe, but those forty-years in hell make him, what, eighty-one? He feels about a thousand. 

“Not yet, I mean.” Jack adds, smiling sheepishly, and Dean heaves a sigh of relief. His stomach unknots some and his shoulders deflate, and the background thrum of hope and agony that takes form in the mantra of  _ Cas, Cas, Cas  _ scraping at the walls of his skull officially goes back into business. 

“Gonna go get Cas, right?” Dean demands, and the tense line of Sam’s shoulders loosen in Dean’s peripheral. 

Jack shakes his head, but he’s still smiling, so that has to count for something. Dean is a hair’s breadth away from losing his ever-loving mind, wondering which one of them was it that made Jack so goddamn shitty with his words. All of them, probably. 

“No, Dean. You’re going to do that. I’m going to tie-up loose ends, untangle the knots Chuck, and us admittedly, have made.” Jack explains, looking up, eyes squinting in the saccharine melt of the setting sun. It makes him look so much like Cas that Dean’s chest collapses a little. 

“And how the fuck am I supposed to do that?” Dean asks, not out of disbelief, but out of desperate need for instruction. 

“What do we need to do, Jack?” Sam echoes, and Dean glances over at him, sees the ripple of his forehead, the way his hands clench where they swing at his hips. Sam loves Cas, as fiercely as Dean does, but Dean knows where he wants to be right now. Just as Dean knows where he wants to be himself. 

“I’m going to open a doorway into The Empty. You’ll be able to find him.” Jack explains, like he’s telling them the rules to a board game. Easy, joyful even. “When you do, when you touch him, he’ll be human. He can’t exist there as a human, and neither can you, so you’ll be brought back here.” 

Dean shakes his shoulders out and nods. “Sounds good. Get to opening the door, let’s go. You’ll be here when we get back, right?” It’s more a demand, than a question, and Jack looks down bashfully, as if he’s surprised at Dean’s vehemence. As if he still,  _ still _ , thinks he isn’t part of this family. 

“Yeah, Dean, I’ll be here.” Jack confirms softly, before stepping to the side and running his hand through the air beside him. Where his hand trails, a fissure opens, not unlike the one he’d created when he was born, and isn’t that something sweet? 

Dean and Sam step toward it in tandem, but both Dean and Jack gesture for Sam to stop. 

“No, Sammy. I got this. Go get Eileen, alright? I’ll be fine.” Dean commands, and Sam clenches his jaw. 

“Dean, I want him back just as much as you do, let me help. Eileen will be here when we get back.” Sam argues, earnest, eyes wide despite the way his eyelids have begun to sleep down in encroaching age, and Jesus fuck, if Dean hadn’t felt old before. 

“It’s okay, Sam. I’ve got God on my side.” Dean smirks, and Sam tries, and fails, to suppress a smile. 

“You do.” Jack enthuses, who’s become distracted by the waves of people bustling around them, something like pride budding on his face like spring petals. Gentle, lamb-like, rebirthed. Dean loves him. Loves him unwaveringly. He supposes that makes him a Godly man, afterall. 

“You sure?” Sam asks with a wavering grin, and Dean claps his hand on Sam’s shoulder. He’s never been so sure of something in his life. 

“Go, kid. Go get her. Can’t keep her waiting much longer.” he tells him, and for once, there isn’t any fear clawing up Dean’s throat. There isn’t that desperate itch to keep Sam in his sight, attached to his hip. Things are good now, as good as they can get without Cas in the picture yet, anyway, and Dean just knows. Knows that there’s nothing left to protect Sam from. Nothing to worry about anymore. Sam will be okay on his own. He’ll be okay. 

For the first time since Dean was four, a new sun beating new freckles into his cheeks, he draws an unhindered breath. He releases it, and Sam steps out from under his hand, pulling his phone out of his pocket. 

“Same goes for you.” Sam says with a mocking jump of his eyebrows, before sobering softly. “Be safe, okay? Come back.”

“You got it, kid.” Dean promises, and with a final look, Sam wonders off, fingers waving over his phone, and Dean turns to Jack. The kid is watching him, hands clasped in front of him, patient, unerring. 

“Ready?” Jack asks, unpairing his hands to offer one to Dean. Dean takes it unquestioningly, and something flares gold in the pocket of their palms. His hand glows hot, pulses once, twice, and then Jack retreats. “Well, now you are.” 

“What did you do?” Dean wonders, but honestly, he doesn’t really give a shit. The fissure yawns at him, something about it singing, and Dean can already feel it. He knows Cas is in there, the siren song of him thrumming up and down his arms, and it takes everything to tear his eyes away from the fissure to focus on Jack again. 

“Insurance. A thread of sorts. One end is tied to you, the other to me. It’s how you’ll get back, since I have to close the fissure behind you.” he explains, and a joke about The Labyrinth dances on Dean’s tongue. 

“Alright, Daedalus. I’ll be back in a jiff.” he jokes, and it falls lightly, pinging around them like a bell, and Jack laughs, and it’s the sound of peace. It’s the sound of God, as it always should have been. 

“See you soon.” Jack promises, earnest in the way he could only have picked up from Sam, before disappearing. A gust of warm air brushes through Dean’s hair, and he closes his eyes against it. 

Yeah, Jack will be back. And so will Dean. 

He turns to the fissure, his hand vibrating, and walks through. 

\--

The Empty is pretty fucking empty. Just a fathomless expanse of nothing. Unyielding, unchangeable, and barren. 

Except for one thing. 

Dean knows it’s Cas, even if he can’t see him, yet. He feels him, feels him in the way he always has, like something of Cas broke off in him, like a blade or a bullet that never found its way out the other side. 

So Dean just walks. He walks and he walks, and it feels like days, and it feels like minutes. Doesn't matter either way; Dean will walk as long as it takes. 

So he does. 

While he walks, he thinks, now that he's got the time. 

He tries looking at it like a book, the timeline of his life. Divides it into chapters. Mom's death, Dad's downward spiral into a sadistic, abusive son of a bitch, the nonexistence of his youth. Those chapters come easy, pages yellowed with an age that has, indeed, healed. He moves on. Roping Sam back into the life, Azazel, Dad dying,  _ Sam _ dying. The first time. 

Hell. 

This one is hard. This chapter's pages stick together with blood. 

Hell is something that Dean gave up a long time ago on forgetting, on healing from. Fuck, he never even tried. How could he? How could anyone? That is blood on his hands that will never wash clean. That is a part of his soul that will never bloom again, and instead will stay to rot, black and riddled with holes. He's been topside for going on thirteen years now, though, well over a decade. He can live with it, he's learned what triggers to avoid, what smells to stray away from, what movies he shouldn't watch, all things that'll send him screaming and hissing to the cage of Hell's memories that sit, bricked up, in his mind. He lives with it, and that's enough. He's learned that there is light again, plenty of times over, and more so now than ever. 

Meeting Cas. What a wild fucking ride. What a thick fucking chapter. He recalls with a fond chuckle the first time he met Cas,  _ Castiel _ back then. Remembers the way, at first, when Cas entered a room the air would crackle and spin like it couldn't comprehend making a sudden berth around the cosmic entity existing in it. He had been so alien, so absolutely terrifying, so incomprehensible that Dean hadn't known what to do with him. Hadn't known how to do anything but look, look back, caught in the high beam of Castiel's stare that even to this day has never dimmed. How he'd looked and looked until he saw chinks in Cas' holy armor and wormed through them, into him, like a virus. He'd infected Cas with humanity, then and there, and Cas had fallen hard for it, ill with it, fucking up time and time again under the new heady weight of it. Dean blamed himself for that, for a long time. 

He eventually became grateful for it. Glad he'd been selfish. Happy that he'd made Cas his own. Made Cas his. Well, ultimately, he's proud that he helped Cas be his own person. Birthed in Castiel fresh thought. The fact that he had no small hand in creating the person Castiel became is one of Dean's greatest achievements.

The year he thought Sam was dead, living with Lisa and Ben. Admittedly, the stained memory of Sam's absence hurts worse than the Braedons'. Idly, he wonders what they're up to. Ben would be twenty-two now. Fuck. He hopes they're happy, he hopes they have the life they deserve. 

Castiel's betrayal that year still stings. It's one of Dean's flaws, isn't it? Thinking he isn't good enough? He hadn't been good enough for Castiel then. Hadn't been enough. He knows, now, after all these years, why it was that Castiel didn't come to him for help. The real reason that has nothing to do with the stubborn burr of inferiority and uselessness that has stuck to Dean as long as he can remember. In fact, he understands better than ever before, after what Castiel told him when he died. 

He can't think about that yet. 

Next chapter. 

Bobby dying. It still seeps into his mouth like the funk of a bad tooth, rotting in his skull. Despite the closure he's gotten since then, despite the age of his grief. Dean hopes he's resting easy. No one deserves it more than his old man. 

Purgatory. 

Purgatory is special because that's when Dean finally figured it out. 

It started not too long before, when Cas was out of his fucking mind, off his rocker and then some, when Dean's thoughts and feelings were so fucking tangled he'd just wanted to hit him. Just beat the fucking shit out of him. His blinking, fogged eyes that no longer shone. The smiles that came too easy, and therefore not genuinely enough. Not real. Not Cas, not the way Dean knew him. Not the way he ever should have been, that stupid fucker. He'd wanted nothing more in those days than to take Cas' head in his hands and shake, shake fucking hard, until his marbles all clicked back together. 

And then, Purgatory, and endless, gray day after gray day, feeling the same thing he does now, doing the same thing he's doing right fucking now, wandering towards the the only thing in him that's ever made sense. 

In Purgatory, Dean learned that he loved Cas. He knows, abstractly, that he'd fallen in love with Cas long before Purgatory. He doesn't know when, exactly, that it happened, couldn't pin a moment down, but in Purgatory he realized. 

It wasn't easy, accepting it. Partly, because Cas' vessel is a man, but that issue was bigger picture. Dean's not an idiot. He knows he's always been attracted to men; that's not something you can ignore away, and he'd learned that the hard way. But boy, did he try, and he tried for a long fucking time. Funny, how dark a stain John had left on him. How purple a bruise on Dean that'll never, ever fade. 

Charlie helped with that, but that was later. First, came Dean coming to terms with his feelings for Cas as if they were terminal cancer. 

Loving Cas, even through all the agony of it, was,  _ is _ , nothing short of miraculous. The fact that Dean is capable of being in love at all, is a kind of ecstacy. Fuck, it's been one of the few things that's fueled Dean in these later years, a fathomless pool of a kind of self-flagellating elation. Loving Cas has always been a drug, to Dean. Maybe that's what being in love is like, for everyone. The way it fills a body with beaming, searing light, the way it makes your fingers and lips go numb, the way it evokes in you a hope that never really dies. Surely, other people feel it, too? The universe being in love creates inside of you? But, Dean wouldn't put it past Cas to be the sole creator for this feeling. Castiel is something different, loving him is, too. Dean has loved Cas for a long time, and the novelty, the shock of it, has never dimmed. It's like shoving a fork in a socket, loving Cas, and shit, if Dean isn't one masochistic fuck. 

He didn't think Castiel capable of reciprocation, whether it was because he was an angel, or crazy, or because who, on Earth, Heaven, Hell,  _ Purgatory  _ would ever love Dean Winchester? It hadn't mattered, that had become evident pretty quick. Dean wasn't going to do anything about it, not ever. 

Not until now. 

So, here he is again, searching for Cas, praying for him with his every breath, his every blink, his every step closer to him. This time, though. This time, he intends to do something about it. 

Moving on. 

The angels falling, seeing Cas so utterly human, blood pumping so viscerally through his veins that Dean had made him blush. Made him fucking cry, made him leave; abandoned him. Its something he'll never forgive himself for, failing Cas back then, when he'd needed him most. It had felt like tearing away a limb, one his many, biggest failures. 

The Mark of Cain. 

Dean stops walking for a moment, and takes a few deep breaths. 

In a way, he's glad for Hell. If it hadn't been for those forty years amongst the flames and the rack, Dean thinks the Mark would've killed him soon as he got it. 

For so long, so long, Dean has been a killer. A serial killer. He's killed thousands of people, maybe even tens of thousands. But when he'd had the Mark, when he'd become a demon, he'd liked it.  _ Loved  _ it. The feel of the hot spray of blood on his skin had been song, the sight of life easing from a victim's eyes had been glory. It had been a sickness, never had Dean been so fucking sick in his life, and he would've murdered the world with a smile. 

Beating Cas within an inch of his life, the memory of it coalescing with what he knows of Cas now, burns hot a brand on his soul that will forever fray. Add it to the others. It's among company. 

Fuck, is Dean even worthy of it? What waits for him at the end of this book, at the end of the line, the peace that'll come after, that Jack assures will be there as well his presence? The peace and freedom the four of them fought so hard for, so long for? 

Dean wants to believe he is. He wants to try. 

So he starts walking again. 

Saving Chuck, that sick bastard, nearly dying for it, too. What a goddamn waste. Mom coming back, kind of worth it. Dean still can't really wrap his mind around it; his mother being a person. It sucks, realizing the parent you'd immortalized, idolized, is just as human and fucked up as you are. It made him love her more for it, though, made him love her so fucking much that losing her for good was like losing a lung. 

But he hopes she's resting easy. He knows she is. Chumming it up with Bobby, probably. Having a beer, if she knows what's good for her. 

Jack's birth. 

Dean raised Sam. He knows that’s why he is the way he is, how he's always been. Sam isn't just his brother, never was, Sam is Dean's  _ son.  _ You try living the life they've lived, with your child to look after all the while, and you try and do things differently. You can't. You can't. 

So when Jack infiltrated their lives, fell into it like a baby bird, Dean found himself a father again. Not on his own this time, not mother and father both, but one of three. Someone new to love, someone fresh and flawed, and  _ his _ , to impress upon, to raise. It had been a little like going back to his roots, what he's always been meant to do. Look after, guide, protect, and hadn't Jack just been so lucky, to be saddled with two alcoholics and a manically depressed angel as fathers. 

Well, they must've done something right. 

Their son is God. 

_ They raised God _ . 

Dean laughs hysterically, but it makes no sound in the empty. His hand flares, however, and that feeling spreads. He's close. He's  _ close.  _

He continues walking, a spring in his step. The book is at a close. What else is there, really? Fighting with the weight of Jack's soul? The divide of worlds? Wrestling with Michael for what felt like the many eons of Dean's life? Defeating God? None of it matters, nothing matters except for Castiel telling him  _ he loves him. _

Dean has been walking and building up to believing everything Cas said to him. What he monologued with tears heavy in his eyes. He had taken Dean's fragile, broken soul in his hands and had whispered to it all the things it had needed to hear. He had torn Dean open, filled him full of his love, his devotion, his faith, his belief in him, and had  _ left _ .  _ Left _ . 

Dean, up till now, has been holding his guts in through that rip. How could Cas expect him to stitch it up himself? 

Well, to be fair, here Dean is, doing it. One long piece of thread at a time, travelling through nothingness for a time now that feels like years _.  _ Dean has been here in the empty for a long time, now. 

Long enough to learn himself, to forgive himself, to accept himself. 

Because when he finds Castiel, when he finds him, he wants to be the man Cas died for. 

When he sees him, when he finally sees him, Dean knows he will be. 

He knows now that he deserves peace. 

So does Cas, more than anyone, does Cas deserve some peace. 

He's close, though. 

Dean knows he's close. 

Another year, and he's so fucking close he can taste it. His senses are bombarded with him. Sight has left him, at this point. Hearing, too. He simply walks, and walks, feeling his joints clack together. Feeling his mind grow easy, feeling his mind rest. 

Then he sees him, and Dean is  _ running _ . 

He skids to a stop, or skids as well as anyone can on nothing, and there he is. Sleeping. He looks like he always has, despite his vessel's aging. Ruddied, tan skin, feathered black lashes that rest in the deep conclaves of his cheeks. The trenchcoat. 

His eyebrows are furrowed. He's been sleeping, but he hasn't been resting. 

Dean smiles. He's waited long enough. He's learned patience at this point, but there's no time for it now. 

They have the rest of their lives to get to. 

So he reaches down and grips the angel tight.

\--

Dean's had to acclimate to sunlight more times than anyone should ever have to. So upon being spat back into his own dimension, the shards of it that assault his vision are familiar as they are acidic. He closes his eyes quickly, already the sound of the Earth as he knows it is so overwhelming that his hands fly up to clamp around his ears. His knees buckle and sink into sticking, pliable mud. He can smell fucking everything. The ichor of a storm that has just bled away, the grease smoke of a diner nearby, the overturned, fresh cut of dirt. It's glorious, after half a decade of fucking  _ nothing _ , but it's also way too much entirely too quickly. 

After a moment or so of the onslaught, he becomes aware of short, frenzied breathing that isn't his own. 

_ Cas. _

He forces his eyes open, squinting as he does so, tears streaming down his cheeks from the strain, from the bustle of sensation returning to him once again, and sees him. 

He's in a similar position Dean had been, eyes shut tight, arms around his head as if all of it is an assault he can ward off with his forearms. Dean remembers with a jolt that Cas is  _ human _ now. 

He shuffles his way over as best he can, and it's slow moving, but he gets there. The fabric of one of Cas' sleeves is smoking, the edges of a giant tear gnarled and black like it had been burned away. He can see why, actually, his heart jumping at the sight of his palm print freshly burned into the flesh of Cas' bicep. 

"Cas." He whispers, and Cas turns his head toward his voice, eyebrows drawing up in shock, confusion, eyes still shut, and Dean sets a gentle but fortifying hand into the crook of his elbow. "Hey, you good?" 

Cas’ mouth opens around a yawning silence, his throat working around words that aren't coming. 

"Hey, hey, take it easy." Dean sighs, and Cas turns completely toward him, his body racking with what Dean is sure is a fuckload of sensation he probably can't suss out worth a shit right now. 

"You made it!" 

It's Jack, and he's kneeling in front of them, eyes bright, grin wide. He looks exactly the same, but that doesn't necessarily mean much in way of telling Dean how much time has passed topside. Dean squints at him, still gasping for breath himself, chest heaving with it, and that's when Jack, and fuck if he isn't Cas' kid to the bone, seems to get a clue. 

In an instant, they're in the bunker, and things are comprehensible again. Dean takes a deep breath. 

“Dean?” A moment of weighted silence. “Jack?”

Now that he isn’t doing his best impression as a pill bug, Cas looks more like himself, and he’s a sight for sore fucking eyes. Dean can’t help but to grin and circle his hand around the other man’s wrist, pulling him for a long-suffered embrace. 

Having Cas in his arms like this, human, isn’t a new sensation, but it’s been awhile since the last time. Usually, having Cas this close is like holding a storm cloud; electric and smoking, leaving the taste of ozone on the tongue. But when Cas is human, he just feels soft, smells vaguely of sweat and flesh. Warm, too, whereas before he exuded no temperature. Cas sinks into Dean’s hug, his arms snaking up his back to curl palms around the rise of his shoulders. Their ears press together firmly and Dean closes his eyes.

He’d walked a long time for this. Fuck, but if every single step wasn’t worth it. His whole body alights with something he’s never been able to name. Something that belongs to Cas’, draws toward him like a flower budding toward the sun. 

Dean releases him reluctantly, and only because he can practically hear Jack buzzing to get a part of the action. The kid swoops in quickly, tucking his head under Cas’ chin and pushing his arms beneath the trenchcoat. 

“I missed you, Castiel.” He purrs, and Cas runs a large, boxy hand through his hair. His eyes meet Dean’s, and there’s so much there. Confusion, budding frustration, shame. Accompanying the latter is a light, dusty pink over his cheeks, and Dean averts his eyes. Allows Cas to maintain some dignity before they talk. 

“I missed you, too. Both of you.” Cas starts, dislodging Jack gently. “What have you done?” 

“No deals.” Dean says hastily, noting the deepening furrow of Cas’ brow. He knows the drill; shit, he should by now. This only proves to confuse Cas further. 

“We defeated Chuck.” Jack prefaces, looking down at his feet sheepishly. “I took away his power. It’s mine now.” 

Dean watches Cas put it together, all his microexpressions as easy to read these days as Sam’s. 

Dean knew he’d been missing Cas, it felt like an open wound growing yellow and plump with infection, but having him here, making faces, mind moving so quickly it’s essentially audible, it reminds him of it starkly. How long he’d really gone without him in the end. 

“How long was I gone?” Dean asks as soon as he remembers to. 

“Five days here, five years there. Sam is on his way back now with Eileen.” Jack tells him, and Dean nods. He’d figured it was about that long. 

“Jack, you’re God?” Castiel asks, still a sucking, black hole of confusion and budding emotion. He wipes a hand through the beginnings of perspiration on his forehead. “I’m human.” 

“Yes, but I- I could change that, if you like.” Jack seems contrite, mouth twitching down. “I’m sorry, Castiel, but I had to make you human to get you out of the empty.” 

Dean feels his stomach swoop with nerves. It’s selfish, but he doesn’t want Cas to get his mojo back. He would if he knew it would make him happy, but it won’t. It never has. Cas doesn’t seem to realize that; burdened by millenia of divine expectation, tangled with holy horrors. 

Dean has never expressed it, but he believes Cas was always meant to be human. Flawed as he is, the intensity of his heart. He’s always been irrevocably different from other angels; something familiar that Dean sees in himself, in Sam. It’s why Jack is so much like him, the two of them deeply similar in that such big parts of them are so explicitly human.

Cas is silent for a long time, and Dean desperately wants to sit down. Actually, he wants to get vertical and sleep for a fucking century, but he only falls victim to the former, stumbling backwards and finding a seat at the war table. He hears the telltale shushing of Cas’ coat, and there’s the warm press of a palm to the side of Dean’s neck. 

“Dean, are you alright?” Cas rustles his way into the seat beside him, clothes puffing up like feathers on the breast of a bird. Jack hovers, forehead wrinkled with concern, hands wringing at his hips. 

“Don’t worry about me, Cas. Just had to get you back.” He incenses, and he meets Cas’ eyes. Fuck, it’s been so long. A seemingly endless stretch of dark, and here the light is at the end of the fucking tunnel. There’s two of them and they are as blue as the Earthen sky. Dean sinks into the gaze as it were a warm bath, his skin rolling with bumps from the force of it. This is all he ever wants to do, has been for years- look at Cas. Just drink him in. Never sure when it would be the last time. 

Cas’ vessel has aged. His eyes have sunken impossibly further into his skull, his skin having taken the brunt of the sun and turning ruddy, the gray at his temples that matches Dean’s own. They’re old, Cas exponentially so. 

Excuse Dean if he’s wrong here, but it’s time for them to fucking rest. 

“And just what, exactly, did that entail, Dean?” Cas asks suspiciously, eyes squinting, jaw working. Dean shrugs and slides his eyes away.

Then, he smirks and looks up again, reels in Cas gaze and says, “I gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.” 

Cas’ mouth falls open, and one of his hands draws up to the mark on his bicep. “Dean. Why?”

Dean chuckles and hangs his head. “Y’know, Cas, someone told me once that good things do happen. This is just one of em.” 

Cas shakes his head, eyes welling with tears. “But at what cost, Dean?” 

“Just half a decade with no nightlight. It’s no forty years in hell, but shit, I’d have done that, too.” Dean enthuses, shifting forward in his chair to press the caps of his knees to Cas’, revels in the warm pressure of their touch. He fists a hand in the tail of Cas’ coat. “You deserved to be saved, Cas. Of course I had to go get you, man. C’mon.” 

Cas looks from one of his eyes to the other, forehead to chin, head shaking minutely, body raking with waves of feeling that have grown dim over the years in the reestablishment of his grace. He’s just a soul now, like the rest of them, and fuck if it isn’t so bright Dean can practically see it leaking out of his pores. 

“You’re saved, Castiel. You’re home.” Jack sighs softly, wrapping a hand around Cas’ shoulder. Cas looks up at him, blinking widely, tears spilling over. 

He turns back to Dean, and takes his free hand in his own. “Thank you.” He breathes. Then he smiles, wide and gummy and loose. He stands, hand slowly disengaging with Dean’s own, and he wraps Jack up in another hug. 

“There’s no need to make me an angel again, Jack.” He pulls away and looks down at himself, hands fluttering over his body. “I’ve wanted this for a very long time.” 

Jack beams and runs a bashful hand through his hair. 

The only thing missing from this picture is Sam and his girl. Dean closes his eyes and sighs. 

He’s home. His family is safe. 

It’s time for rest. 

———————————————————

Dean sleeps for a week. 

Sam and Eileen show up at one point. He knows because Sam comes into his room, runs his spindly hand through Dean’s hair, and makes him drink a glass of water. Eileen accompanies him, tucking the covers more firmly around the defeated slump of Dean’s body. 

Jack comes in frequently, just to sit and watch him. Dean is used to this, with Cas and all, but he hadn’t necessarily expected it of Jack. He wonders what Jack is thinking when he does this, wonders why he does it. Dean doesn’t fight it though. In fact, it helps him sleep smoother. He’d become used to the presence of an all-powerful being in a small space with him, his body in tune to the shift and bursting of the atmosphere bending to the weight of a God. It’s like a white noise machine. 

Cas comes in only once, and Dean had pretended he hadn’t immediately woken to the familiar shift of him in a space. He’d forced his eyes to stay shut when Cas ran a calloused, square finger down the crooked line of his nose and breathed sweetly over him. He’d fought the urge to grab him and pull him into the blanketed cavern of his bed. Let him soak up Dean’s warmth and keep it under his skin forever. 

But they haven’t talked yet. They need to. 

In the end, that’s what gets him out of bed. Everything he hasn’t said roiling behind his teeth, eager to be heard. He’s had a long time to build the courage, a long time to carve out the shame and fear that enclosed the words for so goddamn long. 

He doesn’t know what’ll happen, doesn’t know what it’ll mean. He needs to say it though. All that matters is him fucking saying it. 

He gets out of bed slowly, steadily, donning his robe and shifting beneath the soft press of it. It’s fucking wonderful. Establishes further that he’s rested. Or, has begun the long journey towards rest. 

It’s late morning, and he enters the kitchen to the smoky scent of freshly brewed coffee, and has to stop a string of drool from escaping his lips. Sam is at the table, Eileen pressed beneath his chin, eyes closed, while he stares unseeingly at the wall, fighting the dregs of sleep with a cup of coffee. Jack sits across from them, walking his fingers along the tabletop, leaving indulgent, almost childish, glowing prints in their wake, which pulse and eventually fade. 

Cas is leaning a hip against the island, eyes still closed, large hands dwarfing a steaming mug. 

“Well, aren’t y’all just the Brady Brunch.” Dean hums, the tile cold under his feet as he makes his way to the drip-brew. 

“Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.” Sam mumbles sleepily, and Eileen opens her eyes at the movement of Sam’s jaw, lighting up at the sight of Dean. 

“Dean!” She exclaims. 

He gives her a two-finger salute over his shoulder, already busying himself with the coffee pot. 

“Good morning, Dean.” 

Cas’ voice is a soft rumble, vines of it creeping up Dean’s spine. He doesn’t look over his shoulder, but Cas approaches anyway. He feels the heat of his body draw closer, hears each shift of his feet. 

“Morning, Cas.” He mumbles, keeping his gaze dutifully on the fountain of coffee spitting out of the pot and into his cup. 

In the light of day, it all feels too much. 

Everything Cas said, it’s heavy. It hangs in the air between them, laden with all the emotion, the honesty, the despair, like bundles of spice. The thick of it in Dean’s nose, his mouth, his senses like the cloud aroma of cinnamon or allspice. He doesn’t even know where to begin. How to fill the space that is the most hefty of all, that of Dean’s silence. Everything that has gone unsaid, still. What Dean’s five years in The Empty speaks for. 

Despite all this, always, Dean inevitably crumbles beneath the incessant need to look at him. 

He’s hovering a little too close, like he’s always done, and Dean can smell his shampoo, his deodorant. It’s startling human, but more so is his face, which dips and rises with deep emotion. The skin of his cheeks blushed and indented from his pillow. His hair is soft, and slept-in. It reminds him of a Cas from a long time ago. Only this time, he isn’t in a trench coat, but sweats and a Henley that Dean passed down to him the last time he was human. 

Dean’s eyes flicker to his friend’s lips, the plush, magenta bow of them, for only a fraction of a moment, before settling on the blue fire of his gaze. 

“How are you?” Cas asks, reaching for the pot before Dean can set it back beneath the drip. He passes it to Cas, shifting out of his way, but only just. They crowd the counter, drawn into the bubble of the world they create between them. Dean knows that the rest of their family is in the room, but barely. 

How is Dean? 

Well, for the most part, he’s okay. He got some sleep. He just spent the last five years alone, therapizing himself. He’s as good as it gets. 

There’s only one loose end. 

“I’m good, man. How about you?” He croaks, and takes a generous gulp of his coffee. He twists around to rest his back against the counter, and sees that aforementioned family have vacated the premises. Bastards. 

Cas copies his movements, their arms pressed together, shoulder to elbow. Cas is warm, his flesh licking flame up Dean’s bicep. It’s the wrong arm for his handprint, but not Cas’. Dean wonders if it scarred as prettily as his did. 

“Rested. Human.” Cas hums into his cup, looking at Dean out of the corner of his eye. Dean looks back as he always does, and just the same he wonders what’s going on in the angel’s head. He can’t imagine what it must be like, the layers upon layers of millenia worth of thought, of depth. There’s something about Cas that is bottomless, parts of him Dean will never know simply for lack of time. At least while they’re alive. He doesn’t really know what Jack got up to while he was gone, if he’d fixed up Heaven. If it’s a place Cas and Dean will inhabit together one day. 

“That a bad thing?” Dean asks him, and maybe he’s looking a little too hard, because Cas’ cheeks bloom a ruddy pink and his eyes dart away. 

“It’s the best thing that could’ve happened to me, considering.” Cas admits, pursing his lips. He closes his eyes and takes a big breath that racks his shoulders. “Dean, I believe we need to talk.” 

Dean gulps and he feels sweat bead out on his forehead. He walks away from the counter, ponders leaving the room entirely, but ultimately he falls into one of the chairs at the table. 

“Alright, let’s talk.” He concedes, forcing his eyes away from his coffee to Cas again. He’s hovering behind a chair across from him, looking fraught, and Dean heaves a sigh of his own. “Sit the fuck down, Cas, I ain’t gonna bite your head off.” 

Cas does as Dean’s told him, and shit if that ain’t the thick of it. 

“I’d like to apologize.” Castiel prefaces, fidgeting in a starkly human manner with the lip of his mug. His fingernail is big, to match his big, square fingers. They’re strong hands, Cas’, and Dean’s had them pressed into his flesh for a myriad of different reasons and never the ones he’s wanted. Dean swallows around a sudden thickness in his throat. “I didn’t anticipate you rescuing me from The Empty- otherwise, I wouldn’t have been so selfish.” 

Dean furrows his brows. “Selfish?” 

Cas nods and looks away, contrite. Uncomfortable. Ashamed. It makes Dean’s blood boil. “Yes, Dean. What I did has no doubt ruined a certain level of compraderie between us, and to receive such information before the tragedy of death, it can be harrowing for a person. I didn’t consider- no, I didn’t  _ care _ how my words would affect you, and for that I am sorry.” 

Dean blinks against the onslaught of it, and to be honest, he’s real tired of getting blown to pieces by Cas’ monologues. Tired of being struck speechless, expected to be speechless. 

All his life, Dean has been expected to keep his mouth shut and his head down about all the things that matter. He’s never been good at following orders before, and sure, the last few years of his life he got tired enough to lose that spark of defiance. Rebelling against all the forces against them became routine, became a job, and that spark has since faded away. But not this, the flame that burns in him for Castiel has never sputtered out, and he promised himself in those long, soundless years in The Empty that he was done with silence. Of being silenced. Of silencing himself. 

“Cas, you can shove those apologies up your ass.” He starts, and Cas is taken aback, face falling. “No, wait, you listen to me for once, you stupid bastard. The reason I’m saying it is cause you ain’t got nothing to apologize for. Why would you, man? You were dying. You needed to say those things, I get it.” 

Dean inhales shakily. 

“I get it a lot more than you seem to think. How can you be so stupid? How could you  _ ever _ think that I wouldn’t save you? You changed me, Cas.” At this, Dean finds it in himself to look up. To see. His eyes collide with pools of blue, wet, glimmering, framed more and more everyday with the eons of age they’ve lived apart, between them. “You fought through hell for forty years and yanked my sorry ass out, even after I broke the seal. Even after I became every horrible thing you fought through to get there. And all I’ve ever done since then is keep breaking. You saw it, all of it, every broken thing inside me and you saved me, anyway. All you’ve ever done is save me, Cas. You gave up everything you knew, everything you were, to save me and you’ve never stopped. All you’ve ever wanted to do is save, heal, fix, and you broke yourself apart over and over again to do it. You’re an angel but you’ve got the most human heart I’ve ever seen, and everyday, Cas, every damn day, I hope to be the man that deserves to own it.” 

He’s crying, can taste the salt of tears on his lips, and he knows Cas is crying, too, hears the way his breath hitches and shudders. He’s since looked away, but he’s back at it now. Catches Cas’ gaze, and the world burns in the blaze of their eyes meeting. 

“I love you, Cas, of course I love you.” Dean says.

Cas sucks in a sharp breath. 

“Always have. I’m just sorry I didn’t say it sooner.” Dean finishes. 

Cas slowly stands up, and Dean does, too, and ironically it’s like gravity, even as they rise against it. Like gravity, like the fathomless, inexplicable pull of planets, of orbit, of the velocity of comets and asteroids and all the other star stuff, Dean and Cas pull closer and closer together. All those times of getting as close to each other as possible, all the instances of Dean feeling Cas’ breath wash over his face, once like the sparking of a live wire, now just warm and smelling of coffee, had been practice for this. 

This. 

They never break eye contact, Dean doesn’t think he’s ever broken eye contact with Cas, not really, in the twelve years of eons they’ve known each other, even as they grow closer and ever closer until their foreheads bump and they’ve gone cross eyed. It isn’t until then that Dean’s eyes close, surrendering beneath the weight of it all, the feeling,  _ love _ , seemingly unable to be looked upon for fear of his eyes burning out of his skull. He just feels it instead, feels his chest shuddering apart even as it rises and falls against the hard, warm pillar of Cas’ body. 

“Dean.” Cas whispers, and his lips move against Dean’s, and it’s the beginning of a kiss that Dean never could have anticipated. 

There are no words for it. It’s everything. 

He tastes like coffee, like toothpaste, human and  _ Dean’s, Dean’s, Dean’s.  _ Their lips move together and it’s everything Dean’s chased for, run for, fought for, died for. It’s his best friend, it’s the only person he’s ever loved like this, it’s Cas. 

Cas separates them and utters brokenly into the pocket of space between their lips that burns, “I love you, Dean, I love you, too, I love you, I love you, I love you.” 

Dean chases his lips again, dips his tongue into the heat of Cas’ mouth, his hands framing Cas’ face, pulling them closer, trying to meld them together, not close enough, never close enough. 

Cas’ hands embrace him, roaming up his back to fist into the loose fabric between his shoulder blades, and Dean’s pulling the angel onto his fucking tiptoes in his fervor and it’s always the strangest times that he remembers Cas’ is shorter than him. That he’s not a towering being of light and song and thunder. He isn’t now anyway. 

Cas’ tongue slides against his own, and the taste of him is intoxicating. Better than anything Dean’s ever experienced, every drug, every Mark, every power. 

He pulls away this time, tilts Cas’ head just far enough to the side to breathe into the hot space below his ear, “You’re fucking everything to me.” 

In a kitchen beneath the ground, all their broken, jagged pieces meld together as one, smooth thing. 


End file.
